I don't know how to describe what makes it good except to say that its very clean. I haven't brewed for 7 years, but my previous beers were always a bit harsh. This beer doesn't have any harshness to it at all. Its very smooth and it has zero after taste. I am very happy with it and its only been bottled for 8 days.

Its just a touch tart. You get just a tiny bit of pucker and just a hint of cranberry. I think it turned out really well.

Now my wife wants me to squeeze in another brew before I stop for the summer. Funny, she said that last weekend too. (I brewed the Blue Moon clone for her last weekend...)

I've mashed 4 beers with it thus far. I've tasted 3 of them. Every one of the beers has a very clean taste. I don't know how to describe it except it tastes like a commercial beer would. There isn't any pucker or astringent tastes. Just beer tastes.

For some reason I couldn't get that clean taste with my HERM system. I don't know if its because the steam mashing hits the temperatures right on or if the HERMs system was oxidating the wort or maybe the mash was getting overheated on mashout, but the steam masher has really improved the taste of my beers.

I don't have any evidence to back this up, but I think there is something to be said for mashes that mostly sit and "stew" for lack of a better term. I had been thinking I was going to add a pump to recirculate the wort to minimize hot spots and such, but I'm not going to do that. The beers this setup makes are just so clean and pure its easily worth the little bit of time and effort it takes to stir the mash.

My steam hefeweizen is still in the primary, happily fermenting away. Fermentation has slowed now, but the krausen hasn't quite fallen, so I will probably give it a couple of weeks yet before I check FG and rack to a keg. I'll be sure to say how it turned out. But this was my first hefeweizen, first steam infusion mash, and first 5 gallon AG batch, so I don't really have anything to compare it to for quality!

It was REALLY easy to do the mutistep mash, though. I did a protein rest and a mash-out at the end, which I had never done before. All I did was open the steam valve and stir every now and then -- foolproof! (Perfect for me!)